Wullie

Dunno. Are there any other talented internationals who are perfect for what we need, have fallen out with their club, are going for fuck all and also happen to be desperate to join us? I imagine that's the question Mike Ashley is asking right now... Exactly Dave, exactly. What a fucking cunt this man is. No doubt I'll be told how great it is that we're keeping the powder dry. Not by you obviously but then you've got a brain cell or two.

Well done Mike.

Spawniest club in world football. Total cunts. Michael Dawson ffs. I'd have Mike Williamson over him every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,70441.msg2422434.html#msg2422434 Howay Young Boys, please please hold out.

Yep. Woeful.

Not sure Barton was better than Paul Scholes like.

This needs sorting by Sunday, it's absolutely ridiculous. We can't afford to chuck away potential points over a few quid. Very little in the squad as it stands will worry Aston Villa.

I think that approach is ludicrous. Tv money will keep increasing and so will transfer fees. Spending zero will never become the norm in football like it is at NUFC. If that's the way you prefer business to be done, fair enough. I'd rather have a successful team and manageable debt than a shit one with no debt. If we don't sign someone with craft in midfield, we will be relegated and that will cost the club more. Ashley didn't get it last time and hasn't learned his lesson it seems.

That's the market value Luca is my point. We are looking to pay market value circa 1992.

To put our penny pinching further into perspective, Liverpool, in vast debt that far exceeds ours, just paid nearly 3m for a keeper that couldn't cut it in the Championship.

Loan?

Perch, Smith and Barton are miserably poor.

O'Shea's the weak link, need Jonas to run at him as much as possible. Wonder what's wrong with Lovenkrands, disappointing (especially if we get a spot kick, some bloody hope).

So am I, but not for the same reason. The people saying we don't really know what's going on money wise are partly right of course, as are those who are doing some guesswork and concluding there must be money available. For me, the money side is largely irrelevant. From my point of view, the fans of this club should have a different interest than the owner. What good is it to us if we balance the books so Ashley can walk away with a tidy profit in a few years time? As far as I am concerned I think the fans should demand that the club aspires to be the best it possibly can. We pay out huge amounts of money on season tickets, drinks and food at the matches, fan shop articles etcetera. We do so (from a business point of view) because we enjoy the products that NUFC offers. This club has a huge following (read: turnover) because in recent past it offered a top notch product. In recent years, the quality of the product on offer has gone down substantially, but we have remained loyal. It is in NUFC's interest to make sure it remains so, and for that (like in every other company) investments are needed. I don't particularly care how they do it, or if a certain player cost the club 1 million or 20 million, as long as the club continues to offer quality in return for our personal investment. The internal balancing of the books is important, but ultimately largely irrelevant for the fans (bar going to the point of risking the very existence of the club). The bottom line is the people in charge of this club need to consider themselves "caretakers" of the club, and their success should be measured by how much they take us forward (or not), not how much profit they manage to squeeze out of us over the years of their tenure (which coincidentally I don't object to them doing; they should be rewarded if they take us forward. They shouldn't be when they fail to do so imho however). If Ashley didn't understand this when he bought us then he has no business being a Premiership football club owner. Football is a highly emotional "business" proposition, and managing a football club does not have much semblance to managing a sport article shop. Regardless of the money involved, Ashley has a moral duty to make sure we don't go backwards after he has just been bailed out by Hughton's actual work last season. If he can't muster that, it will be another nail in his coffin in a growing chain of foolish decisions since he has taken us over. This off-season he had the opportunity to turn around the tide and get in a more favourable position with the fans than he has been for a while. I will be baffled if he doesn't take that chance purely for short term personal financial gain. On the nail.

4-5m is an outrageous price and I've hardly even seen the fucker play. If you're young and British you can have ten good games in the Championship and be worth that. Just pay them the fucking money, at least if the lad starts being a dick again we'll get at least that money back for him.

Don't really understand Wenger's approach tbh. His great successes with Arsenal in the late 90s/early 00s didn't come with inexpensive youth players, it's not like he's had big success that way and continues to persist with it. It seems like when he unearthed Fabregas, that totally changed his approach. I admire it in a way and having a team still up there just using youth and relatively cheap players is all well and good but he's unlikely to beat any of the other big guns to a trophy, something he used to do regularly.

You'd have been better off doing it with the bookies.

Weren't the blokes who run Pirate Bay sentenced to a year in jail and fined about 2 million quid though?

Bit late isn't it?

Don't rate Anichebe. His goal record makes Shola look like Gerd Muller.

Speaking of which, here's Scott Carson. Astonishing that these two mugs are capped for England.

Ah that Pensky!

I'm suddenly more confident about staying up after today. Blackpool won't take long to be getting hammered every week and Wigan, WBA and West Ham are miserably poor. Chris Kirkland has long been one of the worst keepers in the league, don't know where he's got his reputation of being vaguely competent.

When did we play them at home, April? We could have had about ten.